Toothbrush Adventure

Inspiration

During my travels abroad I've had to get dental work done out of the US. Some of it was not the best and it's cost me a lot in terms of dollars, time, and overall health. While waiting to get a root canal I saw a hacker news post about the Alexa kids challenge. I wondered if there were any existing skills for dental hygiene for kids, there weren't that I could find. Looking around the internet and surveying close friends and family I found that getting young children to brush their teeth is a common problem for a lot of people.

What it does

The Alexa toothbrush adventure is an mvp that plays a friendly song to help guide you through brushing your teeth thoroughly.

How we built it

I looked around the internet to see if this was a problem that many people had. I looked up tutorials on how to play a song with an Echo dot. I asked my friend EJ if he'd be interested in collaborating on a project, and he had the right tune in mind, he said it should be a 'waltz'. As you listen to it you'll hear how pleasant and easy on the ears the tune is. Then I programmed and configured the skill.

Challenges we ran into

Not sounding like a robot when recording the vocal instructions. Finding other developers that have the skillset and experience to quickly develop an Alexa Skill. It's difficult to debug the Audio Player, if something is wrong it's hard to diagnose what the issue is.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Quickly getting a working skill out in a few days without any prior experience. Smiles on faces of the people we've demo'd it to so far.

What we learned

Designing for Voice Interface products is very different than developing other computing products.

What's next for Toothbrush Adventure

• card readers to support Echo Spot and enhance user experience
• improved recording of audio file
• increased user interaction using slots, choosing different songs, choosing accounts, choosing different adventures
• database for persistent storage of user accounts
• rewards and accomplishments features
• find someone to market the skill and get more people using it

Built With

• alexa-sdk
• javascript
• lambdas